Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday January 31, 2011 @10:12AM
from the farmville-or-die dept.

broggyr writes "According to a story from MSNBC: 'For Mustafa Fteja, Facebook is more than just a hobby. It's the main way the 30-year-old Albanian native has stayed in touch with friends and family all over the world for three years, and when he was inexplicably cut off from it, he did what every other person in this country seems to do when they're mad enough: he sued. In seeking $500,000, Fteja is suing Facebook for disabling his account, in which he had about 340 friends and family and had spent "timeless hours creating content and relationships [Facebook] benefited from," the suit contends. He wants it back on, and he wants the company to pay for the damage of alienating him from his family and friends (about $1500 per friend/family).' Must be nice when you can use a free site and expect to get paid when they cut you off."

Considering you are required to give up your rights to any information posted on Facebook, does that not indicate you are in fact paying a fee for using it? It might not be a monetary fee, but a fee none the less.

Sure, but when you sign those terms I assume you also agree that they can kill your account for any time for any reason (I've never read them as I don't use facebook, but this seems a pretty standard "cover your ass" clause in most TOS).

Guess who can afford a better lawyer? Facebook or some Joe Nolife? Especially if you take into consideration, that for Facebook it's not about $500K, it's about every two-bit slacker that has ever been banned from Facebook to get in line to get his slice of Facebook's cut. Ain't gonna happen.

Who signed anything ? You clicked on a button saying "I agree" to a text full of non-enforceable clause. If I make you click a box saying "I agree to be shot at repeatedly in the action of liver harvesting" buried in a 54 clauses EULA it doesn't make you a fair target.

It provides a contractual obligation for the one who advertises the service and formulates the service agreement. Since Amazon/VISA have written their service agreements themselves, it's naturally harder for them to claim the terms are illegal or unfair.

Facebook is certainly not offering a "free" service out of the goodness of their hearts. It is a mutual exchange: Facebook offers their web site without charge, and in return, their users offer their personal information without charge.

The more basic question is...does this guy NOT have a fucking phone he can use to call his family? I hear snail mail still works...hell, good old fashioned email?!?!

I don't have a FB account, and don't plan to get one...I mean, what's the need for it? I communicate just fine, and VERY regularlly with friends and relatives all over the US without FB. I did well in the past before FB and continue to do just fine without it...and therefore don't risk the privacy problems inherent with a FB account.

In fairness, "friends and relatives all over the US" are a lot easier & cheaper to call with a typical US mobile plan than "friends and family all over the world". International calling charges can be quite steep if you (or they) don't (or can't) use something like Skype.

He had plenty of ways to contact them, but not all of them which are practical inside the US are practical when applied to a situation which involves international dialing fees.

No matter how engrained a free service becomes in your life, unless you have a contract with the provider I can’t see how you are in any way entitled to damages when it’s taken away from you.

And at least in the google case I can sympathize. I still think google has the right to do so, but I can feel for the small business that suddenly loses it’s income stream because google lowers their rank. This is a social networking site... get a grip and/or a life.

You are absolutely correct. In fact, even of the services you pay for, you cannot sue them if they don't provide you the service. If the electric company decides not to provide you with service, you cannot sue them, nor can you sue your gas provider, your mobile phone service provider, your broadband provider, or your cable provider. Read the fine print in your contract. You are obligated to pay them every month, but if they do not provide you the service you paid for, then you are just out of luck.

Please allow me to summarize what I understood of your paragraph: "Service level agreements are unenforceable even from monopoly public utilities." Can you recommend any Google keywords with which to dig up citations? Or what did I misunderstand?

Im not a lawyer, but I think "service level agreements" is the key phrase there. With my residential internet, my service agreement is clearly stating that while they make best effort, if it goes down for a month or something, tough beans. You can only enforce what is agreed upon.

You can get service agreements that are more "heads will roll if we go down", this is usually what you are paying for if you get a T1 line.

A contract, where one party only has to try their best efforts, with no real hard obligations, while the other must pay in cold, hard cash, on time, every month or else doesn't sound exactly fair to me.

I'm all for free enterprise and freedom of contract, but I'd sure as hell sue them if they take cash for no service and/or cause me undue losses or effort. Contracts, where one side takes money and may or may not provide any service of maybe high, medium or low or whatever else quality while the other side ju

Go look at the Facebook user agreement page. The judge will, as it's the binding contract. Then he'll throw it out of court with prejudice. It ought to be required reading for all of its users, who gloss it and just start friending their merry way.

There are states that allow consequential damages, which this litigation might, MIGHT fall under. Judges have also looked at ToS and slammed the gavel, too. The only lesson out of this might be to have an API kit, like a socialDAV, where you could extract your content with some kind of LDAP/LIPS listing to migrate it to the next new cool engine. But that'll be unlikely to happen.

If a utility could be sued for downtime by most of their users, you'd be paying a _lot_ more for your internet and cable.

That's really what it's about.. you are getting cheap internet in exchange for not having a solid service level agreement in place. As I said in my original post, if you want a solid service agreement where they are contractually bound to provide you a certain level of service, and are penalized for breaches of said service.. you can get it.. but not for $30 a month.

A contract, where one party only has to try their best efforts, with no real hard obligations, while the other must pay in cold, hard cash, on time, every month or else doesn't sound exactly fair to me.

It's perfectly fair - it's a contract, and it's what you agree to - except in the cases of government-granted-monopoly utilities (where rates are regulated by the government anyway), you are free to shop around for a rate and a plan that is the most suitable for you.

A contract, where one party only has to try their best efforts, with no real hard obligations, while the other must pay in cold, hard cash, on time, every month or else doesn't sound exactly fair to me.

I would like to congratulate you for proving you stand head and shoulders above most other slashdotters. Seriously.

1) You attempt to confirm your understanding of the parents statements.2) You did not antagonize or attempt to inflame based on your own ignorance.3) You show a willingness to perform your own research of a subject which is originating from a non-authoritative source.4) You did not show contempt for for a non-authoritative source offering a non-authoritative piece of information.5) Even better,

You are obligated to pay them every month, but if they do not provide you the service you paid for, then you can call your state's public utility commission, board of trade, state AG, or even the FTC, depending on type of company, and report them for non-delivery of service.

FTFY. Just because you yourself can't sue someone doesn't mean there isn't someone out there with an awfully big stick who can play whack-a-provider if they don't honor their contracts.

Paid services, especially utilities, are a different matter. If you experience an unintentional disruption of service like a car hits a power pole, then your electric company usually isn't liable. However, if the electric company disconnects your service without going through the proper procedure then they can be liable.

Many years back, the southern company (The extra-large regional power company in the southeast US) actually reimbursed me for food spoilage from a power disruption that they caused. I

I've never RTFC (lol, 'contract'), but when we've lost power, telephone, and/or internet, we've always gotten a deduction on our bill. It might just be friendly cust. svc., of course, but I think they DO have to provide your service. (Virginia)

Actually, there's a far more pragmatic reason for those laws - if the temperature drops below freezing and a home that isn't winterized isn't heated, the pipes could freeze and burst, causing far more damage than what a few hundred to low thousands of dollars of electricity would cost.

Ergo, it's actually better for the power companies to put a lien on the house rather than cut off electricity in freezing temperatures. It's better for the bank that owns the note, the insurance company that wou

No matter how engrained a free service becomes in your life, unless you have a contract with the provider I can’t see how you are in any way entitled to damages when it’s taken away from you.

It's not even like it's taken away from him forever. 10 minutes would be enough to roll a new account. Then he can put the word out his old account was locked and can people refriend him again. Chances are he could rebuild most of his network up in the space of a day or two. Or politely going through whate

"Free as in Beer" is becoming expensive these days! If we're going to agree we're now discussing Facebook as the metagame to adapt around, then we can't just give them a free pass to boot the user but keep all his nice crispy data they gathered for their ads.

there's an actual trade. the web is not usually 'free'. kids with nothing but time on their hands and no income think that the web is free but when you give info to the greedy '2.0 asshole webmasters' you HAVE paid for the content. you think they'd just give content away totally literally for free?

payment is much more than cash, checks and credit cards. you pay but not in direct cash.

but you DO give something and you get something.

to me, that's a contract and you certainly sign agreements saying you'll

You still have Telephone, you still have Internet, you still have any number of ways that people can use to keep in touch. No more than 20 years ago, we didn't even have Internet as commonly as we do now. This is not a requirement for you to live. They didn't cut off your power unjustly, or even your phone line. When I read "More than just a hobby" I thought it was going to explain that he makes a living through facebook... maybe then I'd see where he's coming from. As it is, all I see is another facebook addict who feels that it's his god given right to keep up to date with his friends.

This looks like a pretty clear cut cash grab. He says it's for "Justice" but I call bullshit on that. Justice in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars maybe. Too bad for him, I'm pretty sure there is something in the EULA that would state Facebook reserves the right to cancel your account for whatever reason they want. I don't know what this guy is expecting to have happen. In the end, frankly, I hope they counter sue for legal costs. Suing for a ridiculous reason like this shouldn't go unpunished. It's an affront to the legal system to be wasting it's time like this.

Do you have family thousands of miles away in a foreign country? 20 years ago instead of facebook keeping you close with your family and friends, you just didn't talk/see them. Going abroad meant saying goodbye. You didn't call them but for holidays if you could even afford it - it cost anywhere from $1-5 or more a minute to call overseas. I was in Petrozavodsk Russia in 1995, at that time it cost about $2.50 a minute to speak to my family in the US.

For others, it's a lifeline to their family and culture from vast distances away. I think we need to be aware of that when we consider just how much affect the internet and facebook has had on the world.

Great story but Facebook is a service offered for free. They don't guarantee you anything that warrants a 500k lawsuit.

The price you pay has little to do with damages. A doctor is not somehow immune to malpractice if he decides not to charge you.

Damages are not just to recover what you have paid.

It's a question of entitlement - is he somehow entitled to Facebook?

I would argue that he is not, as he doesn't actually pay anything directly to Facebook for their services and has not entered into a contract specifying a set guaranteed level of service. If the situation were different, then he might have a case against them for cutting him off, but only in very specific circumstances.

As it is now, my opinion is that he's trying to make someone else pay for his own foolishness, at best. At worst, again, m

Do you have family thousands of miles away in a foreign country? 20 years ago instead of facebook keeping you close with your family and friends, you just didn't talk/see them. Going abroad meant saying goodbye. You didn't call them but for holidays if you could even afford it - it cost anywhere from $1-5 or more a minute to call overseas. I was in Petrozavodsk Russia in 1995, at that time it cost about $2.50 a minute to speak to my family in the US.
For most people, facebook is a unique little addition to their everyday life and a way to see what Johnny from 3rd grade is doing these days. For others, it's a lifeline to their family and culture from vast distances away. I think we need to be aware of that when we consider just how much affect the internet and facebook has had on the world.

I'm 100% behind the idea that The Internet needs to be a protected right. I really do think everyone who wants access to the Internet, should be provided access, and that guaranteeing access of SOME kind should be mandatory. But we're not talking about the Internet, we're talking about facebook, which is a very small part of the Internet itself. I'm not saying it's not convenient, and I'm not saying it hasn't made a lot of people's lives much easier. I'm saying it's not a god given right, and suing because

People did live without electricity, gas and phone lines for several millennia. Does that mean they can cut them off? And if you were provided with free gas, heating, electricity and transportation for years and then quickly cut off for no reason, you'd be troubled as well.

City dwellers may need gas for heating and cooking more than people in rural areas, but those need their car more. And nerds need Internet access more than jocks..Now, Facebook may not be the most life-critical utility to me, but the que

I don't agree with you. If Facebook is to establish itself as the unavoidable social network place, it shouldn't be able to kickout anyone on an abritrarily basis or even weak basis compare to civil rights. This is somewhat equivalent to virtual emprisonment and it shouldn't be something Facebook uses at its own discretion. Otherwise, it's time to reinvent social networking.

but you know what, it's becoming increasingly hard to function effectively without a Facebook account. Just like a cellphone and a car, they're "luxuries" that you're expected to have, and you stand out and look weird when you don't. Your boss expects you to get to work (car), expects instant contact (cell phone) and now expects you to be a team player on your Facebook site.

GP's wording might be a little strong, but in some cases it can be a strong a disadvantage to not have one.

Just like not watching TV can put you at a strong disadvantage relating to people. (I went without for nearly 2 years, never had a clue what anyone was talking about when it came to shows, new movies, funny commercials, etc.)

And lets face it, this world is all about relating to people, and always has been. "It's who ya know" What kind of band, widely public company, anybody that relies on media exposur

Your job requires you to have such an account? You've got some family member that you must be in contact with, but who doesn't have e-mail and can't take a phone call? You have pictures to store, and can't think of a single other place to put them? You feel the need to publish your status to the world, and can't find a single other way to do it besides using one particular company's free service? Which "function" are you having a hard time performing if you don't sign into Facebook on a given day? Or are y

Try promoting an event (and I mean a paid for event, not your birthday) today without twitter and facebook. It's still possible, but it's much harder to do and you can reach a much larger audience by using these tools. A larger audience means more customers.

Now, having not actually RTFA yet, I can't comment on the merits of the case.

However, the sum he's suing for is relatively small, compared to most of the crazy lawsuits I've seen - usually, they seek at least $10M, sometimes much, much more, all the way into the trillions. That itself says something about the case - it may be more about actual justice than profiteering.

PS: The guy is claiming a friendship is worth $1,500. Minimum statutory damages for "pirating" a single album is $7,500, or five friends. That alone says much about the US judicial system and this case.

Then I've got bad news [usocial.net] for him, a facebook friendship is worth less than 20 cents on the market. And I didn't even do any shopping, just picked the first Google result for "buy facebook friends".

You know, it's actually interesting that Facebook opted to allow themselves to be sued in court rather than forcing their users into binding arbitration like pretty much every other company that provides some service (mobile phones, utilities, cable, internet, etc.). Of course, since the terms of facebook limits liability to $100 dollars or whatever you pay facebook within 12 months, the recovery from such a suit would probably wind up being less than the court fees, or arbitration costs.

Same situation here. I've been cursed with a native Estonian forename "Anti" ( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Anti ; it is not a rare name here, i know multiple Antis and even some celebrities are named Anti). Facebook is very strict about using real names and they are having automatic to ensure that... And my forename fails the check. A year ago, it took me about a month of e-mailing to register an account. I even had to scan and send my passport copy to prove I'm real.Fast forward one year... Today morning, I'm unable to log in. Facebook tells my account has been suspended and I have to enter my real name to proceed. I enter my real name again and get an e-mail that my account is deleted now and they do not accept any further correspondence regarding that matter. Let's see if they answer to my e-mails or I'm banned from facebook forever just because my forename.

While I sympathize with your plight, you must keep in mind that Facebook is still, after all, a private company. And when a private company looks at a person they see a customer. And when they look at a customer, they see revenue vs cost. If it is too costly to interact with everyone in your situation vs the new revenue you will bring, they will simply write those people off as losses and tie off the bleeding asap.

The most notorious example of this is when insurance companies deny coverage to high risk

Must be nice when you can use a free site and expect to get paid when they cut you off.

There's tons of confusion about who Facebook's customers are. This kind of confusion goes back to television and radio stations, and popular magazines.

The participants, the readers, the viewers... these people are not the customers of these companies. They are a resource being mined and sold. Media companies, and entities like Facebook do have customers: Advertisers.

With broadcast, one-way media of yesteryear, these companies had no quality-control on the product they offered. They couldn't deactivate someone's access to a TV station because he or she routinely walked away during commercial breaks. The newspaper company couldn't identify and stop delivering papers to the person who read only the comics and used the rest as bird cage liner. Likewise, these companies could only promise "eyeballs" to their customers. Facebook, on the other hand, is offering "personae" to their customers. Each resource is not merely a potential viewer/listener, but now consists of that and a photograph, a name, a location, an age, interests, lists of friends, education level, and various other biographical data. They're offering a lot more "product" to their real customers now, and so they have a lot more interest in quality control of that product. No advertiser wants to pay for such a premium service as having a viewer's friend's photo appear next to their ad with the declaration that the friend "Liked" that product, when the friend's photo is goatse or Hitler.

Facebook is just being responsive to its customer base. The real question: How should the human users of Facebook understand, quantify, and describe their relationship with Facebook? They're certainly not just "getting to use a free site." Are they employees being paid in a product-use benefit instead of cash? What are their employee rights then? This guy's issue is less of an aggrieved customer situation than it is a wrongful termination suit. There might be analogies that make even more sense. Perhaps it's even possible that these cases be discussed clearly in the realm of what they really are, and the terms will evolve from that, rather than ill-fitting, borrowed terms... Might take a few decades.

There is nothing that says that the laws of the USA automatically apply to people in other countries. Seriously, we are talking about the Internet here, and in the same way that international spammers are difficult to prosecute due to the laws of one country not necessarily applying to people from other countries, there is nothing that says that someone from another country should be able to use the US court system for a BS lawsuit like this. If anything, the US government should charge the guy for the right to use the US legal system for this stupid claim.

There is nothing that says that the laws of the USA automatically apply to people in other countries.

No, but a contract (subsets are terms of service and EULAs) work both ways. There is a choice of law and it's either in my jurisdiction or in theirs, not surprisingly every company I've ever dealt with state it's in their own as part of the contract. That means I can't use the laws of my country, because it won't have jurisdiction. I not only can, but I must use foreign law to sue as long as the contract is under foreign law. Even if the behavior against me has been criminal, I must use their criminal law n

Lots of comments about how suing is evil and hope this guy loses blah blah blah. Anyone ask why this guy got booted? The guy basically has not been told why he was booted. Despite repeated emails all he was told was "you violated our terms of service" which is a nice generic cop out for "out automated processes found something and we don't feel like treating you like a human being to give you any more specifics." It seems like suing to find out why is his only option since Facebook isn't cooperating.

Sure it's a free service, sure it's quite possible that it's not a big deal since it's only a social networking site and little of value will truly be lost. However, Facebook offered it's service for free, the guy used it, and then got booted without discussion. The guy deserves at least some answers, any human being would. And it looks like the only way to get answers is to make it relevant to Facebook that they should be providing them or risk this and other lawsuits. It sounds less frivolous and more like the guy just wants some respect and I think he deserves it. Otherwise we risk other people being treated like this. I urge this man to go go go.

While $500,000 is ridiculous for compensation from a free service, I do feel he has one valid point: if Facebook has disabled his account for any reason, they should provide it to him and give him some avenue to correct the situation. Even though it's a free service, with over 500 million active users [facebook.com], it's a pretty ubiquitous and universal service. It might not be wise to come to depend on it, but it's certainly understandable how someone would. If Google seemingly arbitrarily disabled your Gmail account (insert free but depended on email service here) would you be as dismissive?

I really hope Facebook ends up being a passing fad. The best thing about the Internet is that it is decentralized. *Everyone* using a service like Facebook ruins that and gives one company too much power.

He may believe that there is no way to win the case and is instead seeking to force Facebook to change their practices which he sees as unjust through bad press such as this Slashdot story. If he kept money that he didn't expect to receive then that wouldn't be doing it for the money.

There's an issue of account ownership with all of these services. One of the reasons I've given up on Amazon Web Services (and my Google account on my Android phone) is information ownership. This guy probably has a lot of contact information locked up in Facebook that he can't get out anymore. I don't use Facebook, so I don't know how it works.

But, if you look at Wikileaks and complaints of those Gmail has kicked out, depending on a 3rd party to maintain your cloud is a dangerous thing. When they pull

... but I have formal training in law science, and just because everyone here seems to think contract law applies, I would like to know if there are no other grounds to file such a suit upon. Namely, I personally wouldn't go the contract way, I'd rather fight on an undue and abrupt discriminatory situation. Going out of contract law in favor of a more general civil tort (is that the name ?).

I think it would be possible to prove that while a majority of person have equal access to the service, having one's a

First, "equality of rights" only applies for certain things (race, religion, color, sex). Secondly, it would not be up to FB to prove anything, they are the ones being sued. It is up to the plaintiff to 'prove' that the reason they were denied access is because of one of the above reasons, and not for some other reason.

Secondly, it would not be up to FB to prove anything, they are the ones being sued. It is up to the plaintiff to 'prove' that the reason they were denied access is because of one of the above reasons[...]

I'm not so sure, but as I previously told I don't deal with US laws. The reason I have trouble to admit your opinion is because it's akin to what romans used to call a probatio diabolicum, that is to say an impossible proof to bring. The usual judiciary way to deal with such proofs is to gather evidence that the situation is abnormal - abrupt termination of service - and the given reason is too general to be satisfactory - 'breach of TOS' without specific motivation. Then the burden of proof is shifted on t

While a lot of people dismiss this as a money grab, and it may very well be, but there are important societal issues here. OK, Facebook is a private business, we all get that, but at what point is a "private business" so pervasive or necessary that it is no longer "private?" If a private institution becomes vital, like AT&T in the last century, the government used the sherman act.

I'm not saying Facebook is vital, but for a lot of people it is their primary contact medium. It may not be universally vital

I am serious about the question. Facebook is embedding itself into commerce and government. Congress critters, political groups, the military, NGOs, and businesses are using it for information exchange. At what point do nations decide that access to FB becomes so critical that arbitrary disconnection from the service cannot be done. Some places I have lived, where winter weather can be sub zero Fahrenheit, have ruled that natural gas and electric service is so critical that service cannot

Maybe I'm confused about how this site is supposed to work, but it seems like in the past the articles were more from the author's point of view instead of just regurgitation and links back to other journalists who actually did the research. What am I missing?

Just because you signed it, doesn't mean it was a reasonable contract and, therefore, doesn't mean those sections are legally binding.

Otherwise, everyone in the world would write contracts that meant they could never be sued for anything ever even if your cars brakes fall off on your first trip from the showroom, while all their employees would be whipped to death each day to make them work. Hey, they signed the contract that said it was okay!

What about the several rulings in the EU that the EULA inside a software box cannot be enforceable because you have agree to it before you know what it is?

MS got caught by that one and had to give refunds to people who *didn't* agree with the EULA but had already "agreed" to it by opening the box.

Contract law is much more complicated than just "he signed it". For a start, a court can throw out almost anything in a contract they don't think is fair. But it takes a court to do it, because they alone can det

You can't jam signals for any reason, disclosed or not. However, NBC could decide to no longer be affiliated with the local TV station, thus 'depriving' you of access to NBC shows, and you would have no recourse.